Content-based user interface for document management

Abstract

A content-based method of managing a collection of documents is disclosed. A user interface is provided for managing the collection of documents. For each document, at least one information object representative of conceptual content of a portion of the document is identified. The information objects are combined with additional conceptual information inferred from the user interface to determine a network of conceptual relationships associated with the collection of documents. The user interface provides user access to the network of conceptual relationships to manage the collection of documents.

Description

[0001] This application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 639,063, filed Dec. 23, 2004, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The invention generally relates to document management interfaces, specifically, to a content-based user interface for document management. BACKGROUND ART [0003] In recent years, electronic mail (email) has become central to communication and collaboration in the workplace. To a large extent it has replaced many older communication technologies such as memos, letters, faxes, and even sometimes face-to-face and phone conversations. It also often serves as a repository for information including files, project plans, task lists, and contact information. Recent research at IDC has found that email is the most time-consuming content task for today's information worker. The breadth and importance of email use has resulted in a dramatic increase in the amount of email with which many wo...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0016] Embodiments of the present invention combine the accessibility of a browse tool, the power of a search tool, and the flexibility of filtering, applying these tools to email messages (and similar documents) in their entirety, identifying and using structure in unstructured content via text mining software. The result is a powerful and adaptive set of tools for organizing, prioritizing, locating, and managing information. In effect, it reads your email for you; presents you with a list of items in your email; and provides powerful tools through which those items can be used to locate relevant content.

Problems solved by technology

Recent research at IDC has found that email is the most time-consuming content task for today's information worker.

Workers need powerful tools for email because they are no longer able to cope with the sheer volume of email they receive.

Yet existing tools fall far short of providing sufficient methods for information management and retrieval.

This is considered to be unstructured because a traditional computer system (without natural language understanding) cannot identify structure within it.

Traditional email systems base their user interaction on the format of email messages, yet the bulk of a message's content is unstructured.

The primary information management and retrieval tools in such systems are thus limited by this:

There are severe limitations to these methods:

The choices available to browsing tools are limited by the data in message headers and the ability to produce a set of clear choices out of the possibilities for a given header.

While useful, these fail to provide access to any information about the message content.

The Subject header may provide some information about message content, but because Subject headers do not use a standard, predictable vocabulary like other headers, their use in browsing is limited.

While effective in some situations, this is not ideal in the case of email since the content of unread messages (and even older read messages) is often unknown, and the wording of desired information may be unintuitive to the user since he or she is not the author.

Subject headers may be poorly written or indicative of only a portion of a message's content, so finding important content in even a short list of messages may be difficult.

These improvements are welcome, but remain within the strict boundaries of the email medium's format and do little to address the most critical component of email content: the unstructured message body.

However, text mining software has not been applied to email (or other similar documents) in a way that avoids the drawbacks of the query / response search paradigm, yet remains accessible to business end users.

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